1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of liquid crystal display technology, and in particular to an array substrate and a manufacturing method thereof and a display panel using the array substrate.
2. The Related Arts
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have a variety of advantages, such as thin device body, low power consumption, and being free of radiation, and are thus widely used. The development of the liquid crystal display industry brings in severer and severer performance requirements, such as performance related to high resolution, high brightness, wide view angle, and low power consumption, and associated techniques have been developed. Most of the liquid crystal displays that are currently available in the market are backlighting liquid crystal displays, which comprise a liquid crystal display panel and a backlight module. The operation principle of the liquid crystal display panel is that, with liquid crystal molecules interposed between two parallel glass substrates, application of electricity is selectively carried out to control the liquid crystal molecules to change direction in order to refract out light emitting from the backlight module for generating images.
The liquid crystal display panel comprises a color filter (CF) substrate, a thin-film transistor (TFT) substrate, liquid crystal (LC) interposed between the CF substrate and the TFT substrate, and a sealant and the manufacturing process generally comprises: a front stage of array process (including thin film, yellow light, etching, and film stripping), an intermediate stage of cell process (including laminating the TFT substrate and the CF substrate), and a rear stage of assembling process (including mounting of drive ICs and printed circuit board).
The liquid crystal display panels that are available in the mainstream market can be classified in three categories, including TN (twisted nematic)/STN (super twisted nematic), IPS (in-plane switching)/FFS (fringe field switching), and VA (Vertical Alignment). The FFS display panel is superior to the TN display panel in respect of view angle and is superior to the IPS display panel in respect of liquid crystal transmittance efficiency and thus, besides applications thereof in small-sized devices, is also getting a wider and wider applications medium- and large-sized monitors and televisions.
An FFS display panel uses a fringe electric field between a common electrode and a pixel electrode to drive liquid crystal. To eliminate after images caused by residues of direct current, it is a common practice to use an alternate current mode for driving. Such an alternate current is achieved with a voltage applied to the common electrode. Thus, the uniformity of the voltage on the common electrode directly affect the displaying quality of images. When the voltage of the common electrode is not uniform, the images on the screen may show phenomena of being greenish and flickering.